Samuel Levin

This is my father's brother Samuel Levin. The picture was taken in Riga in 1939. None of my father's brothers followed in the footsteps of my grandfather. Samuel and Vulf had a joint venture, but they had nothing to do with timbering. I don't know what they did for a living by 1940. Both of them were married. Of course, they married Jews; it couldn't have been otherwise in a traditional Jewish family. I vaguely remember Samuel's first wife. Samuel's son Valentin was born in 1930 in his first marriage. He had a daughter: Noemi, my coeval, in the second marriage. Four of our families went into evacuation: us, my father's brother Samuel and his family, Aunt Rosa, her husband and son, Aunt Irina and her husband. Vulf helped us a lot. He made arrangements for the truck driver to get us to the train station. We packed hastily. We decided not to take many things. The only thing I could talk my mother into was to take my new coat. In spring I had a coat made with rabbit fur collar and fur muff. I loved that coat and couldn't leave it. Then I had been wearing it in the postwar years and it was the only piece of warm garment I had. That coat and muff took most of the room in a small suitcase, carried by my father. My mother was pregnant at that time and couldn't carry heavy things. On the way to the train station Letts were firing at us from the buildings. Those people were definitely Letts, as Germans hadn't come into the city yet.